Lets you choose Normal or Wide for the area seen by the center AF sensor.

Fv lock

Tap the FUNC button, the flash goes off and meters itself - once. Now every succeeding shot needs no preflashes! This means that, so long as your distance stays unchanged, that you'll get instant shutter release, and more importantly, no blinking from the preflashes. This choice fires the preflashes only once, and uses that information for every succeeding shot until you reset it.

It resets itself when the meter turns off, or if you tap the Function Button again.

Flash Off

Doesn't fire the flash so long as you hold the FUNC button.

Matrix

Goes into Matrix metering.

Center-Weighted

Goes into CW metering.

Spot

Goes into spot metering when held.

Top Item in My Menu

I use this! This is the key to life!

Not only can I get to my very favorite My Menu item, if I click left, I can get to the rest of the menu system, meaning I can shoot with just one hand!

This sets the function of the AE-L/AF-L button on the rear of the D90. It also can be set to many of the same functions as the other buttons.

I set mine to AE lock only. This way I point the camera where I want my exposure, and hold the button until I recompose and make my exposure.

AE/AF lock

Locks exposure and focus.

AE lock only

Locks exposure.

AF lock only

Locks focus.

AE lock (Hold)

Locks exposure and holds it until the meter turns off or you press AE-L/AF-L again.

AF-ON

Focuses while you press the AE-L/AF-L button.

Fv lock

Tap the AE-L/AF-L button, the flash goes off and meters itself - once. Now every succeeding shot needs no preflashes! This means that, so long as your distance stays unchanged, that you'll get instant shutter release, and more importantly, no blinking from the preflashes. This choice fires the preflashes only once, and uses that information for every succeeding shot until you reset it.

It resets itself when the meter turns off, or if you tap the AE-L/AF-L button again.

Don't touch this setting, or you could happily shoot an entire wedding, look at each shot on the LCD in every display mode and zoom setting, and not realize until the end of the day that you had no card in the camera!

If you're a salesman at Best Buy, set this to Enable Release so people can play with the D90 with no memory card, otherwise, don't touch this.

Nikon's exposure meters have always read backwards. More exposure goes to the left, and less exposure goes to the right. Huh?

Nikon's rangefinder cameras of the 1940s had shutter dials and aperture rings which rotated in one direction. No big deal, but when Nikon added meters to cameras in the 1960s, the meters had to read to make sense as you moved the dials, so Nikon's meter needles and bar graphs have always gone in the wrong direction. (The superior vertical bar graphs of the D3, D2 and F6 don't have this problem: up is more.)

Thankfully Nikon has never changed this, since in whatever decade they do, there will be massive confusion among all Nikon users familiar with the (wrong) way it's been forever.

For newcomers, you can use this menu to flip things back to normal, as Canon has done it since their EOS cameras of the 1980s. If you do, more goes to the right.

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